Andrew Malcolm, responding to a photo that shows a man at a homeless shelter snapping a cellphone picture of Michelle Obama during a volunteer visit, writes:
If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?
And if he is homeless, where do they send the cellphone bills?
I mean, one of the cool things about being a reporter is your job is essentially to pick up the phone and get people to answer your questions. Even if you are, as Malcolm appears to be, completely ignorant about a subject, your job is to ask questions and you can always fake like you’re asking the question in the interest of “clarity” and not because you just don’t know. But a little common sense with something like this, and that wouldn’t even be necessary.
First of all, if you’re say, evicted from your home, your landlord does not confiscate your cellphone. If you stop paying your bills and no longer have service, a guy in a trenchcoat with a baseball but doesn’t show up at your (former) door and repossess your cellphone. Upon losing your job or your home, the bank does not come and frisk you, demanding whatever possessions might be on your person. Even if you’re wearing a tuxedo, someone from the “Poverty Department” does not come through and take your clothes, offering you a set of government issue Dickensian rags so you can be identified as genuinely poor by the kind of people who whine on YouTube about taxes and how they’re better than you because they make more money.
Malcolm has no idea of what this man’s circumstances are; how long he’s been homeless or how long ago he was last employed. And as John Cole points out, it’s hard to get a call back from a potential employer if you don’t have a phone for them to reach you on, let alone an address. To get a job, you at least need one, if not both. So let’s say the man can afford a cellphone bill…how does being able to afford a cell phone bill mean you can afford an apartment or even afford to feed yourself ? In terms of getting a job, it’s hard to see a more prudent investment. But according to former Laura Bush flack Malcolm and the right wing bloggers he tosses red meat to every day, being homeless and in possession of a cellphone raises serious questions about whether the people homeless shelters serve really need the service at all.
— A. Serwer
